Salary Story: Career Changing Was Harder Than I Thought It Would Be
4 Mins Read
In our series Salary Stories, women with long-term career experience open up about the most intimate details of their jobs: compensation. It’s an honest look at how real people navigate the complicated world of negotiating, raises, promotions and job loss, with the hope it will give young women more insight into how to advocate for themselves — and maybe take a few risks along the way.
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Age: 28 Location: London Current industry and job title: Consulting, strategy and innovation consultant Current salary: £42,000 Number of years employed since school or university: Six Starting salary: £31,000 Biggest salary jump: From £37,500 to £50,000 in 2019. Biggest salary drop: From £53,000 to £42,000 in 2024.
Biggest negotiation regret: I was desperate to leave a role and after a lot of losing out in the final round of interviews, I was just relieved to get a new job when it finally came and didn’t negotiate my pay. I realised later they were desperate to hire more people and hadn’t had much luck, so I probably could have added a couple of grand if I had tried.
Best salary advice: Have someone in your corner who advocates for you and supports your promotions.
First job out of university and it took a while to get there. There was no possibility of negotiation for this one as the salary was the same for all teams. I joined a graduate scheme with relatively high pay, great holiday and benefits, so I was happy with the overall package.My wonderful manager fought hard for us grads to get a pay rise, intending to give us the best possible chance of good pay six months later when we rolled off the graduate scheme and into our final teams. After 18 months of no increases, not even inflation, this was a welcome raise!I had talked to the head of the team I wanted to join about the role I’d like to have, as it was a fairly new team with no junior roles. I presented a document with roles and responsibilities, which we agreed together and she took to HR for them to benchmark and come back with an offer. Thanks to the efforts of my previous manager in giving us grads a boost a few months earlier, we were offered higher salaries than our predecessors on the graduate scheme. Having heard horror stories of being lowballed from previous years’ grads, I was ready to fight my corner but was thrilled when such a big increase was offered.I had some inflation increases in my previous company but nothing major. The status of the team felt very precarious after huge organisational changes. Pretty much everyone I knew and liked working with left, I wasn’t enjoying what I did and I didn’t see a future at the organisation. I found it very difficult to find a job in a new industry, even though it was related to my old role, but eventually found a startup consultancy. My research showed salaries for this role were lower than I expected so I didn’t push for much more than I was getting already, hoping the career change would pay off longer term.The move to a much smaller company didn’t pay off as they were much more exposed to market changes and ultimately let some people go. The tech job market was extremely challenging and I was out of work for a very long time, consistently getting to final interviews and then being told there was a hiring freeze. I eventually found a role relevant to my skills and experience but in the nonprofit sector, which was unable to match my previous salaries. It’s frustrating that my initial big jump has been reversed, especially when the cost of living has gone up so much in the meantime, but I had to take this job as some money coming in is better than none. On the positive side, the work environment in this company is infinitely better than my last so at least I can enjoy the people I work with and know I’m part of something more meaningful.
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